The perfect song. Mallecho Wishfort, who everyone simply calls “Witch”, has one wish and goal: to write “the perfect song”. Though he’s supremely gifted and seems capable of anything, it may be the one thing he can’t do. Witch is one of main characters in Hunter Steele’s 1984 book The Wishdoctor’s Song. The author’s second…
Category: Reading lounge
Lee Ranaldo’s “Last Night on Earth”: Album of the Year?
“The world is wild, wild and free / It means everything to you and everything to me / We can waste our time and let it pass us by / Or open up our eyes and let it in” -from “Home Chds” [note: “Chds” is an abbreviation for “chords”] Lee Ranaldo’s new album Last Night…
Neil Young’s “Decade”: An Appreciation
Neil Young and I go way back. At least, his music and I go way back. Back to my early teen years, when “Sugar Mountain” – a song about becoming an adult – was directly applicable to me. Back to the days of cassette tapes, even! (Yes, that long ago.) Nowadays, I may go for…
Sound City: A Dump, A Palace
What do Bill Cosby, cult leader Charles Manson, and daredevil motorcyclist Evel Knievel all have in common? It sounds like the preamble to a particularly clever joke (or maybe just a particularly bad joke). The answer, however, is that they all recorded songs in a not-much-to-look-at, often-trashed studio called Sound City. Classic albums by artists…
The Swimming Pool Q’s: “The A&M Years 1984-1986”
Among the pantheon of 1980’s “college rock” bands, only a few – R.E.M. being the most prominent – managed to transcend their cult following and attain mass popularity. Others, despite having releases on major labels, were destined for obscurity. Either they were too quirky, didn’t have the support of their record label or the radio,…
River Crombie: “Time Beyond Me”
One wonders what an artist like Nick Drake would have done in this age of social media, Youtube, and Bandcamp. Would he have found a wider audience for his music during his lifetime? Would that virtual word of mouth, that immediate and direct feedback from listeners, have provided enough of that missing recognition he seemed…
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